Warzone Ranked play: Battle Royale delayed and then surprisingly deployed— server instability and other issues plague the launch of Call of Duty Season 4

Call of Duty: Warzone Ranked Play Season 4 promotional images of a squad member being kicked off of the high rise.
(Image credit: Activision)

The update for Call of Duty: Black Ops 6 and Warzone Season 4 rolled out to players on all platforms two days ago, but the latest season for the massively popular franchise from Microsoft-owned Activision has been fraught with issues.

New seasons typically introduce at least a few new bugs, but Season 4 seems to have broken Call of Duty — both the free-to-play battle royale, Warzone, and the premium pay-to-play multiplayer of Black Ops 6 — in a variety of unique ways. The initial update brought with it stability issues for Call of Duty: Warzone, with players having trouble getting and staying connected to Call of Duty services.

Season 04 Launch Trailer | Call of Duty: Warzone & Black Ops 6 - YouTube Season 04 Launch Trailer | Call of Duty: Warzone & Black Ops 6 - YouTube
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Within 24 hours of the launch of Season 4, the official Call of Duty Updates social media account was announcing multiple features of the game were being disabled due to performance issues. This included the ability to edit custom loadouts in the pre-match lobby in Warzone, Black Ops 6's theater mode, and Zombies players reporting issues with traversal mechanics like fast travel and ascenders.

It was only a matter of time, then, before the Call of Duty team started to disable features while they investigated the ongoing problems. The first to get the axe was the Motherclucker blueprint for the ASG-82.

During the launch of Season 3, Ranked Play for Black Ops 6 Multiplayer was disabled. Despite the ongoing Season 4 issues, the team re-enabled Ranked Play for multiplayer. However, plans for Ranked Play: Battle Royale for Warzone were delayed. In a statement on social media, the team addressed the delay by saying, "We've decided to delay Ranked Play: Battle Royale while we work on bringing the experience back to it's intended fidelity."

As Friday rolled on, updates continued to roll out to Call of Duty as the team worked to repair the stability issues. Following an update Friday evening that seemingly addressed the hitching and stability issues being reported in Warzone, a new social media post went out to declare that the team would be launching Ranked Play: Battle Royale "momentarily."

There has been no mentions by the team whether the delay of Ranked Play: Battle Royale or the other launch issues with Season 4 will impact the planned launch of Ranked Play: Resurgence Trios on Rebirth Island for Call of Duty: Warzone with the midseason refresh.

Cole Martin
Writer

Cole is the resident Call of Duty know-it-all and indie game enthusiast for Windows Central. She's a lifelong artist with two decades of experience in digital painting, and she will happily talk your ear off about budget pen displays. 

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